


Scars to You're Beautiful

by Bus_Kids_Burgade (Inthemorninglight)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/F, background fs friendship, mentions of past self-harm and scars, s1 ua
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 09:25:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13143759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inthemorninglight/pseuds/Bus_Kids_Burgade
Summary: Skye is ready to take their relationship further, but Jemma's afriad of what Skye will think when she takes her clothes off.





	Scars to You're Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> This story deals with past self-harm and the risiducal scarring. For Skimmons Secret Santa 2017

They shouldn’t be doing this, oh my god, they  _ should not  _ be doing this. 

But Jemma can’t seem to stop. 

Skye hooks her hands around Jemma’s thighs and hikes her up easily. Her legs lock around Skye’s middle and she takes advantage of the new height to kiss her with even more vigor. 

“We’re supposed to be - pretending to be - servers - “ Jemma says breathlessly when Skye’s tongue isn’t in her mouth. 

“They have plenty of those,” Skye says, brushing Jemma’s hair back behind her ear. 

She catches Jemma’s bottom lip between her teeth and Jemma gives a small squeal. Her fingers tangle in Skye’s hair and Skye’s hand slides along the curves of her torso down to her ass. The scent of Skye’s vanilla lemon shampoo is filling her whole body and her muscles ripple under Jemma’s palms and  _ god  _ she never wants to leave this stockroom. 

The door swings open with a bang. Skye bites Jemma’s lip much harder than she meant to. They’re on the other side of a shelving unit, so they have a few seconds to compose themselves, Jemma almost leaping out of Skye’s arms, Skye brushing her hair back into place, tugging her shirt straight. 

“Hello Agent May,” Jemma squeaks, leaning around Skye with a painfully guilty expression on her face. 

Skye groans inwardly as she turns around. 

“You’re supposed to be on the floor,” May says, arms crossed. “Watching for any suspicious activity.” 

“We thought there was - uh - some suspicious activity back here,” Skye says. “Just… trying to be thorough.” 

May’s stony expression does not change. Jemma shrinks behind Skye a little. 

Skye swings her arms back and forth. “Right, well, guess it all checks out, huh Simmons?”

“Yes, nothing suspicious to note,” Jemma chips in. 

“So we’ll just…” Skye grabs Jemma’s elbow and the two of them squeeze hastily past May to resume their posts. 

“They’re going to stop putting us on ops together,” Jemma hisses as she fits her comms unit back into her ear. 

“Nah, we make too good of a team,” Skye says breezily, scooping up a platter of drinks and preparing to re-enter the festivities. “It’s probably a good thing May interrupted us though,” she adds, turning back to Jemma with a sly expression. “I had more romantic plans than a pantry for our first time.” 

….

_ Our first time _ . 

Jemma cannot get the words out of her head. They’re echoing there as she scans the crowd for their mark, as she talks Coulson through which serum to use to counteract the magnetic abilities in the mark’s blood. They’re briefly displaced by a keening fear as she dodges a blow from a cronie of the week and helps Fitz knock him unconscious with a cafeteria tray, but as soon as they’ve stuffed the body in a supply closet the words are back to bouncing around her head. 

It’s not as if she hasn’t thought about it. It’s not as if it weren’t, in fact, one of the first thoughts she had when she first caught sight of Skye’s gorgeous long hair and sparkling eyes and frankly applause-worthy backside. But that was an idle daydream. That wasn’t something that took place in this reality. 

They’ve been together for over a month now, so she supposes she should have revisited the idea with more seriousness, but up until the pantry it has been all soft kisses and coy looks, movie nights curled up in each other's’ arms and fingers finding each other under the table. That particular scenario felt much further off.

And it’s not that Jemma does not want to go there. Oh lord does she want to. Having nothing between their hot skin, losing track of where she ends and Skye begins, that weightless kind of love that takes up all of you. She wants that, and she wants that with Skye.

But it also means something else. It means, most certainly, laying bare a different part of herself, a different sort of vulnerability. And that terrifies her.

…

“You don’t have to take your shirt off,” Fitz points out when he inevitably drags the cause of her ‘more twitchy than usual’ behavior out of her. “Or keep the lights off. You don’t have to get into all of that to... ah... sleep together.”

Jemma hums a less-than-convinced affirmative, jotting down notes on the mitosis process of the alien cells they’ve collected for their next case. 

Fitz snaps his fingers. “If we’re able to lower their core temperature, the silicon-based polymers would - “ 

“-become highly unstable, yes, brilliant! But that could also be life-threatening. We just want to slow them down, not disintegrate them at this point.” 

“Ah, fair point,” Fitz acknowledges and crosses out some of the preliminary design elements he’d begun sketching. 

“It feels like lying,” Jemma says after a moment. 

Fitz glances up at her. She’s squinting into the microscope so she doesn’t see the way his gaze has softened. “It’s not lying, Jemma. You don’t have to talk about it if you’re not ready to.” 

“She’ll probably think it’s weird if I keep my shirt on.” 

“So what?” Fitz counters. “Skye’s cool. I’m sure she won’t be put off or make a big deal of it. What if we focus on the oxygenation process? They still have to deal with some kind of gas exchange.”

“Hm, we don’t have an exact read of their anatomy but I suppose I could run some conjectures on the cellular level…. And I know, you’re right, but -” 

Jemma squirms uncomfortably and tugs at the sleeve of her lab coat. 

“Simmons,” Fitz says, laying his tablet aside to add emphasis to his soft tone. “Whatever you want to do, it’s okay. But they’re not something you have to be ashamed of. You know that, yeah?”

Jemma nods, holds his gaze a moment to convey her gratitude for the assurance. “Alright, take a look at these specs and see what magic you can make with them.” 

…

Jemma paces. Her heart beats a nervous flutter in the base of her throat as she waits for Skye’s knock at her bunk door. She hopes she’s made the right decision. She hopes this doesn’t ruin anything. She’s sure it won’t. But it may change things. And she’s not sure if she’s ready for that.

The knock comes, right on time, and Jemma stills. She takes a breath, then another. Tugs her sleeves down even though they are already stretched over her knuckles. Okay. It’s now or never. 

“Simmons?” Skye calls through the door. “Anybody home?” 

Jemma nods to herself and opens the door.

“Hey,” Skye says, looking her up and down as she slides into Jemma’s small bunk. She plops herself comfortably in the middle of Jemma’s bed and looks up at her, tilting her head inquiringly. “What’s up?”

Jemma’s eyes slide to the floor as she gathers the words she’d rehearsed in the shower this morning.

“The other day…” she clears her throat. 

Skye sits forward, concern clouding her face. “Hey, c’mere.” 

She stretches a hand out to Jemma. Jemma doesn’t take it, but she does perch herself on the mattress beside Skye and try to shake some of the stiffness from her muscles. Skye takes the cue and doesn’t touch her. 

“Are you okay?” she does ask, though. 

Jemma shakes her head to clear it. “Yes, yes. Silly of me to be nervous.”

“You said you wanted to talk about something,” Skye prompts. 

Jemma nods. She slides back further on the bed and turns to face Skye. They’re quite close together this way, they’re knees brushing. 

“Well, it’s more showing,” Jemma admits cautiously. “The other day… you mentioned having plans. Regarding our first time having sex.” 

“Oh,” Skye says, caught by surprise. “I didn’t know - if I’d known this was about that I would have done a little more preparation -” 

“No, no,” Jemma says quickly. “This is preemptive to that. Because I’d very much like that to be special too, and only - there’s something that you’ll see, the first time we start stripping clothes. And it isn’t a very romantic thing and I hardly want our first conversation about it to be when we were planning something else, and so - I’d like to show you now. If that’s alright?” 

Her eyes meet Skye’s and there is a very unfamiliar vulnerability there. Skye nods, not entirely certain about what’s going to happen next. “Yeah, of course.”

“Okay.” Jemma pushes out a long breath and pulls her sweater over her head.

She takes care to fold it and lay it aside, then pat the static from her hair, giving herself a moment before she has to look back at Skye. 

Skye has seen them. Jemma can tell by the slight part in her lips. They’re hard to miss, the scars that track up and down her arms. Thin, criss-crossing lines that can be, really, only one thing.

And now that they’re out in the open, now that there is no taking them back, an odd calm comes over Jemma. She looks down at her own bare arms with a detached sort of interest, runs a finger over the rough patches.

“I was fourteen when I did the first one,” she says quietly. “Twenty-one when I did the last. They’ve faded some now. I like to think they’ll go entirely someday.” 

“Jemma…” Skye murmurs. 

“You can touch them, if you’d like,” Jemma decides. “They can’t hurt me anymore. Not unless I let them.” 

Very tentatively, Skye trails her fingers across the marks, up from Jemma’s wrists to her shoulder, then brushes her cheek.

“Did you - get help?” Skye asks.

Jemma nods. “I’m alright now. Or at least I have been for the past few years. It isn’t always easy, but -” She smiles and shrugs. “I talked to somebody for a while. They taught me better things to do, and gave me some medication. Some I still take, some I’ve gotten off of.” 

Skye nods and looks down and Jemma notices there are a few stray tears glittering in her lashes. 

“I’m sorry,” Skye says quickly, wiping them away. “I shouldn’t be the one crying here, I just -” 

“It’s alright,” Jemma assures her, and twines her fingers through Skye’s, keeps her eyes on the way they fit together. 

“Can I ask why?”

Jemma hitches a shoulder. “A lot of things, I think. There’s a lot of pressure involved with being a prodigy child, especially a girl in a competitive, male-dominated field. Among other things I’m sure we’ll get around to discussing at some point. We all have our demons, don’t we?”   

Skye breathes a hollow laugh. “That we do.”

Jemma untangles their fingers so that she can pull her sweater back on, suddenly chilly and feeling the exposure. Skye crawls up to the head of Jemma’s bed and opens her arms. Jemma curls into them gladly. 

“I used to hate them. The scars,” she admits, face buried in Skye’s sweater. “I used to feel they were embarrassing and loathsome. Not pretty to look at and… uglier to think about. Fitz would say they’re some kind of battle scar or something, but they always just made me feel weak. Because I couldn’t handle my own life.”

“I may not have known you as long as Fitz has, but I can say  _ definitively  _ that you are anything but weak,” Skye says and squeezes her tight.

Jemma winds her arm around Skye’s middle so she can squeeze back. 

“I know it’s quite a lot,” she says after a few moments of quiet. “We were having such a lovely, breezy time of it, and now I’ve gone and brought all that up.” 

“That’s kind of the point, though, isn’t it?” Skye muses, tucking Jemma’s head under her chin. “You’re supposed to get to know each other better. Good, bad, and ugly. And if you don’t think I come with a hefty load of my own baggage….” 

She lets the sentence trail off.

“I am glad you told me, though,” Skye says after another beat. “You didn’t have to. I mean, we didn’t have to go all the way any time soon, or you could’ve kept them covered up.” 

“I know,” Jemma says. “But I did want to. Like you say, natural progression and all that. And - I don’t want to carry them around like some secret. I don’t hate them so much anymore, but I don’t think of them as battle scars, and I suppose this is one step closer to battle scars.” 

“Hell yeah,” Skye says softly into Jemma’s hair. 

…

When it does finally happen, they’re first time, it goes much slower and sweeter than Jemma had imagined. 

Skye’s bunk is lit softly with ambient lights that flicker like candles. A bouquet of roses Jemma cultivated herself in the lab fills the close space with a heady scent. Their lips are gentle and they peel each other’s clothes off as if they’re unwrapping something precious. 

Skye’s hands move over Jemma’s arms as if she doesn’t even feel the scars. Her eyes don’t skip over them as they take in Jemma’s body, but they don’t linger either. 

And just as Jemma is overwhelmed by things that are not wholly physical when she looks at Skye, captivated by her strength and boldness and courage, she knows it is more than just her body Skye means when she whispers, “you’re beautiful.”

And for the first time since she was fourteen, it’s like the scars aren’t there. Or rather, like they’re just a part of her, not good or bad, just hers, and she doesn’t have to think about them or feel them. 

  
It’s just the two of them, all of them, and  _ that’s  _ beautiful.


End file.
